From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 7 15:25:32 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7968416A4CE for ; Wed, 7 Jan 2004 15:25:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp3.server.rpi.edu (smtp3.server.rpi.edu [128.113.2.3]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1E84243D41 for ; Wed, 7 Jan 2004 15:25:30 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from drosih@rpi.edu) Received: from [128.113.24.47] (gilead.netel.rpi.edu [128.113.24.47]) by smtp3.server.rpi.edu (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id i07NPTAI001538; Wed, 7 Jan 2004 18:25:29 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: drosih@mail.rpi.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20040107145744.GA74418@ussenterprise.ufp.org> References: <79B4EAB03B5E4649A740A8C1452F606435AF1B@y6001a.umb.corp.umb.com> <3FFAF1D4.4000709@iconoplex.co.uk> <3FFB4499.3050301@iconoplex.co.uk> <20040107145744.GA74418@ussenterprise.ufp.org> Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 18:25:27 -0500 To: Leo Bicknell , freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org From: Garance A Drosihn Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Scanned-By: CanIt (www . canit . ca) Subject: Re: Where is FreeBSD going? X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 23:25:32 -0000 At 9:57 AM -0500 1/7/04, Leo Bicknell wrote: >Speaking with a user hat on, I'll comment on what I believe >is the crux of the 5.x issue. >The take away I see is that this was too big of a chunk. >The next bite planned needs to be smaller. I agree with this observation, but then it's easy to see that in hindsight. We started on some ambitious targets when 5.x started, and at the time we believed we were going to have a lot more full- time development resources than we ended up with. That whole big problem with the "dot.com bubble bursting". I do think we need to tackle a somewhat smaller chunk of projects for 6.0, so it won't take so long to get it done. I also expect we have a much more realistic idea of what our resources are than we had in late 1999. >You can't delay one year or two years in a production >environment. Actually, in a production environment you're more than happy to delay a year or two. You don't want constant churn. You don't want new API's and ABI's every year. The problem for freebsd is that 4.0 was released in March of 2000, and that was advertised as a "stable" release. 5.0 was released in January of 2003 -- and was explicitly *not* a stable release. We could stand to have a major stable release every two years, or maybe even every three years, but this is going to be more like four years. That is too long. -- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu